One Thousand Posts on Track of Words

I can’t quite believe I’m writing this, but after four years and nine months of working on Track of Words this article is my 1,000th post! To celebrate that milestone, I asked around – in my reading/gaming group, and on Twitter – to see what sort of article might be of interest, and the resounding majority of responses asked for some form of retrospective looking back at the last few years of Track of Words, and my own history with Black Library and Warhammer. The people have spoken, and who am I to deny the will of the people?

And so, here we are. I’ve tried not to ramble on too long as I take a look at some stats for Track of Words, think back to what got me started with reading, and then with Warhammer, and pick out a few key milestones from the nine hundred and ninety-nine previous articles I’ve posted. Hopefully it’s not too self-indulgent, but true to form it is pretty long!

Track of Words in numbers

Before I strap myself into the time machine and start delving into my murky memories of the past, let’s break down the last almost-a-thousand posts and put some numbers together. I’ve done some digging into the stats provided by WordPress to find some (hopefully interesting) numbers to take a look at.

First of all, over 248 (or thereabouts) weeks, that works out as an average of just over four posts per week, while in 2018 so far, if my maths is right (don’t count on it, it’s not my strong suit) then I think I’ve averaged a little over six posts per week. No wonder I’ve felt busy recently!

Here’s the total number of posts per year, over the (nearly) five years I’ve been writing Track of Words:

• 2014: 113
• 2015: 134
• 2016: 197
• 2017: 296
• 2018 (YTD): 260

I’m constantly amazed at how far and wide people come from to read these posts. The vast majority of readers are based in English-speaking countries like the UK, the USA, Australia and Canada, but I’ve had at least one visitor from places as far afield as the Solomon Islands, Butan, Papua New Guinea, and even the Vatican City (I imagine the Pope is an ork player). In total I’ve had visitors from 174 different countries across every continent except for Antarctica. Maybe one day someone from a polar exploration centre will pay Track of Words a visit! Here’s a map showing where those visitors have come from…

Next let’s see how the numbers break down by the different types of article. Out of the 1,000 in total, I’ve posted:

704 reviews, of which:

• 294 were for books.
• 335 were for short stories.
• 75 were for audio dramas.

77 interviews, of which:

• 53 were Rapid Fire interviews.
  • Across 23 different authors.
• 5 were Forgotten Texts interviews (about stories from the old Inferno! magazines).

219 blog posts, of which:

• 111 were Black Library Weekly posts.

I’m not surprised to see a large proportion as reviews, but I really was surprised to find out that the proportion was quite so high. Even I’m learning something by finding out these numbers!

I also wanted to take a look at the breakdown of authors within those 704 reviews. Across all of those posts, I’ve reviewed stories by no fewer than 139 different authors, which I’m really pleased about – it’s nice to be reminded of the variety that I’ve been reading and listening to! Here’s the top ten by number of times I’ve tagged them in articles (i.e. reviews and interviews):

• 61: Josh Reynolds
• 59: Gav Thorpe
• 58: John French
• 56: Guy Haley
• 50: David Annandale
• 46: Dan Abnett
• 39: Chris Wraight
• 31: Nick Kyme
• 31: Rob Sanders
• 29: Graham McNeill

I think that’s almost enough stats, although I’ve got one last number which I think is my favourite of the lot. The total number of words I’ve written on Track of Words so far is…

746,858!

To be honest, I find that number hard to grasp…nearly three quarters of a MILLION words, in a little under five years? Blimey. Without getting too soppy, I’d really like to say thanks to everyone who’s dropped in (even once) over the last few years to read one of my articles, and encourage me to keep writing!

Inspirations

A few people asked me to write a little about what got me into reading Black Library stories, and the Warhammer hobby in general, so I thought I’d take a very quick look at how I got started with all of that. While Track of Words isn’t an exclusively Warhammer-focused website, I do talk predominantly about Black Library so it seems an appropriate topic to take a look at!

Before I discovered Games Workshop and its many ways of encouraging me to part with my money, however, I discovered reading – and in particular reading fantasy. I won’t bore you with endless details of the stuff I used to read as a kid, but I will call out three series of books that had a real influence on me as a youngster.

Firstly, Redwall by Brian Jacques, the first in a series of children’s fantasy books complete with anthropomorphic animals, heroic quests, great battles and fantastic adventures. I’m pretty sure this was originally the first book in a trilogy, but a quick check of Wikipedia tells me that the series extended to twenty-two volumes; I probably read the first seven or eight of them. I don’t remember when I first read Redwall and the rest of the original trilogy, but I know I was pretty young, and I really just lost myself in the world and the storytelling.

These are talking animals having adventures, but I have strong memories of the trials the characters went through, and the sadness when beloved characters died. Okay, we’re not talking grimdark fantasy or George R.R. Martin levels of character death, but as children’s books go they were quite the rollercoaster ride of emotions. Looking back, I can see so much of what I still love about fantasy books was already in place with Redwall, and I’ll always have a soft spot for Matthias and his quest to find the armour and weapons of the fabled Martin the Warrior, in order to defeat Cluny the Scourge and save Redwall Abbey.

I’m a bit hazy on the dates, but at some point a little later on – after digging into The Hobbit and having a crack at Lord of the Rings – I discovered another fantasy series which had a massive impact on my reading. David Eddings’ The Belgariad, beginning with Pawn of Prophecy, is a series I must have read all the way through maybe three or four times over the years, and which cemented my love for the sort of epic, quest-based stories, grand world-building and detailed magic systems that I still really enjoy reading about.

It’s maybe not the most well thought-of epic fantasy series these days, and Eddings doesn’t seem to have the enduring reputation that authors from that period like David Gemmell have, but for me The Belgariad – and the next series The Mallorean – is my touchstone for that sort of writing. Without reading those series I doubt I’d have gone on to pick up books by Robert Jordan (whose Wheel of Time series I love, despite its faults), Julian May, Raymond E. Feist, Stephen Donaldson or many others. One of these days I’m going to go back and re-read (again) all of those 80s fantasy books I loved so much, and it’s going to be a blast!

Lastly, I can’t talk about fantasy influences without mentioning Terry Pratchett and the Discworld. Pratchett is and will forever be my favourite author, and his books have had a phenomenal impact on me over the years. I vaguely remember reading and loving Truckers, Diggers and Wings first of all, then picking up The Colour of Magic for the first time and being a bit baffled by it, but still enjoying it. I wouldn’t necessarily say that the early Discworld books are my favourites, but I obviously enjoyed them enough at the time to keep reading and start to get absorbed in the world Pratchett created.

I remember my school’s librarian arranging a Discworld quiz which my sister and I worked on together and came first and second in (I misspelled orangutan, so came second), and Terry visiting the school to give a talk and sign books. I was such an uber-fan even then (hence the competition success) that it was a HUGE deal for me to meet the man himself, and I even embarrassed myself (well, it’s more embarrassing looking back now than I think it was at the time) by asking Terry’s daughter Rhianna for help with the Discworld computer game!

I went on to bury my head in all sorts of other fantasy and science fiction books and series over the years, some absolute classics and others…less so. I was quite the headstrong teenager, so may have taken longer to get to some ‘classic’ novels than others as I stubbornly focused on what I wanted to read and not what other people told me I ‘ought to’ read, and I’ve got massive gaps in my reading history that I’m sure I’ll eventually fill, but boy did I love what I read.

It’s interesting looking back and realising that most of the really important books for me as a youngster were fantasy as opposed to science fiction. I’m not sure when I started veering off more towards the sci-fi end of the spectrum, but I guess it happened gradually. It may even have been something to do with Warhammer 40,000, which over the years I think I slowly came to love more than Warhammer and the Old World. Speaking of which…

25 years of Warhammer

The year is 1993, and I’ve not long turned ten. A school friend of mine has sold me on the idea of a new hobby, and at risk of sounding deeply dramatic my life is about to change. You guessed it…that was my first introduction to Games Workshop. Specifically, I went home from school that day the proud owner of my first ever miniature – a lead Space Marine Librarian. That’s the one, on the right in the picture below, holding a scroll and a pointy sword. I’ve still got him somewhere, with the remnants of an ancient, appallingly thick paint job still in evidence.

As usual I don’t remember too many of the specifics other than that being my first GW miniature, but I do know that I went big on the hobby right from the off. I recall visits to the Preston branch of Games Workshop (my more local branch, in Blackpool, didn’t open until a couple of years later) and hobby sessions at the dining room table assembling RTB01 Space Marines…or at least, attempting to assemble them. All safely supervised by my parents, of course! The same year I even went to Games Day ‘93, at Donnington – the first of many such events I attended, once again supervised by my long-suffering mother.

If I remember rightly, while I went straight for Space Marines in 40k, the first Warhammer army that caught my attention was the Dark Elves – no idea why, I just liked them. Problem was, the Dark Elf army book wasn’t out yet, and there weren’t many options for units to buy…so obviously I instantly defected and bought Warhammer Armies: High Elves instead. That army book, as much as anything else, is what properly set me on the path of being a fan of the hobby and the background for life. 40+ pages of captivating background to the High Elves and their defining conflict with their dark kin, a battle report between Alan Perry and Nigel Stillman, and the tragic stories of Eltharion, Tyrion and Teclis…if you can get hold of a copy, it’s an amazing book.

After that it was Codex: Eldar in 1994, and then an endless stream of further army books and Codexes as I spent countless hours poring over background and flavour text, and writing and rewriting army lists that I almost inevitably never got round to collecting. Or if I did, I never got round to painting! I’ve never really developed a faction bias, as I always shuffled from one army to the next, getting excited about new models and stories and then quickly distracted by the next! Those fourth edition Warhammer and second edition 40k army books are absolute goldmines of information, and more than all the painting of models and playing of games it’s the stories and imagery that they conjured up in my head which really hooked me on the hobby.

As such, it was inevitable that I would graduate from reading colour text and short fiction in Codexes and army books to full novels set in the Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 worlds. As you’ve probably gathered by now I’m not so good with dates so I can’t remember how my early investigations of Games Workshop novels fitted in with what else I was reading, but I do just about remember the first two series that I started reading. This was well before Black Library existed, so they were published by Boxtree under the label of GW Books.

Boxtree and Black Library
I couldn’t say which order I read them in, but my earliest involvement with what would eventually become Black Library was with the Konrad trilogy by David Ferring and what I knew as the Inquisitor trilogy – now better known as the Inquisition Wars trilogy – by Ian Watson. Bear in mind that this was 25 years ago or thereabouts, and I can’t have been much older than 10 when I first read the opening novels of these two trilogies, so I was very much at an age where I was still forming my tastes and interests. Reading those two books, which are both SUPER dark, was quite the experience back then!

If you’ve not read either of these series, they’re obviously quite different in their settings and the types of characters involved, but they both really captured the early tone of the two Warhammer universes. They’re VERY different to the sort of things I would have been reading at the time, whether we’re talking Redwall or David Eddings or The Hobbit or whatever, and I’ve no doubt whatsoever that they set me on the path to reading and loving Black Library stories. Don’t get me wrong, they’re a bit left of centre (ok, in Ian Watson’s case a lot) compared to modern BL stories, but they’re still great!

A few years after those books were released – along with ancient classics like the Drachenfels books and Brian Craig’s Orfeo trilogy, all (or at least most) of which I devoured – came the launch of Black Library, with issue one of Inferno! magazine in 1997. I’ve talked LOADS before about how much I loved – and still love – those early Inferno! stories, and I’ve no doubt they play a big part in how much I enjoy reading BL short stories these days. I think the opportunity to read a wide range of stories from different authors, about different characters across the various settings, was a great way of figuring out what I really liked, and getting a feel for what was possible in BL fiction.

I could ramble on for ages about the stories in the first few issues of Inferno! but now’s not the time or place, so instead I’ll just quickly mention two of them. Jonathan Green’s Salvation is a great example of the heroic aspect of 40k, as a lone Ultramarine survives the horrors of battling genestealers to live a briefly idyllic life before sacrificing himself in the name of those who saved his life. That story has stayed with me for so long, I love it! For all the darkness of 40k, it’s possible to find light.

In stark contrast, then, is Chris Pramas’ Into the Maelstrom, in which an Astral Claw attempts to defect back to the Imperium, and is sent to spy on Huron Blackheart. This one stayed with me too, but largely because of the utterly horrific ending which still haunts me to this day. It’s a brilliant story, but that ending really freaked me out when I first read it – for me personally it’s about as grimdark as 40k can get! That’s what Inferno! did so well, showcasing different voices and writing styles and reminding readers that these are vast worlds where almost anything is possible. As a kid reading these stories, that was awesome!

I’d say that those were the key milestones along my Warhammer journey, as I got hooked on the hobby and the settings. Like lots of people, as I got a bit older and moved away from my childhood friendship group, and found my interests expanding out into other things, my involvement with the hobby faded a bit. My spending on miniatures, games and paints certainly dropped off, but I always kept at least loosely up to date with Black Library – the background lore is what I love the most, after all. In recent years I’ve done a lot more painting and gaming, but Black Library has been the one constant all the way through.

Over the years I spent many an hour ambling around bookshops and frequently came away with whatever Black Library paperback caught my eye, back in the day when BL predominantly published mass market paperbacks. I didn’t know many people who shared the same interest, however, so it remained on the backburner a little…until I decided to attend the inaugural Black Library Weekender in 2012. I’m not the most sociable of people, so I look back on that decision – to head up to Nottingham on my own – with a bit of surprise, but I’m glad I did it!

I’ve talked before about how great the Weekenders are, but I think the key factor for me is the friendships that I’ve made off the back of them. Don’t get me wrong, the content and the chance to meet and mingle with the authors is all brilliant, but the opportunity to meet and get to know other fans, other people who share your interests – that’s the most powerful factor. I met my mate Stu for the first time at the 2012 Weekender, and the rest of my reading/gaming group at subsequent Weekenders – all friendships I wouldn’t have made without having been brought together at these events.

In fact it wasn’t long after the second Weekender, at the end of 2013, that I decided to start writing book reviews, a decision that led to the creation of Track of Words and – nearly five years later – this article.

Track of Words: a potted history

Until January of 2014 I hadn’t written a book review since…well, I don’t know. Since I was in school, probably. To explain why I decided to start writing them again, I need to quickly look back to the start of 2013, when I was inspired by a friend to set myself a challenge for the year of going to see 52 ticketed events – i.e. gigs, theatre shows, exhibitions and so on. My job at the time gave me access to a lot of arts events, so it was a matter of committing to saying yes to as many things as possible, and keeping up the discipline of finding and arranging events to attend.

I had a blast with that challenge, but by the end of 2013 I had been made redundant from my job and wasn’t in a position to be able to afford to spend money on tickets…although I still wanted to set myself a challenge for the following year. Instead, I took inspiration from a present that a friend gave me, The Book Lover’s Journal, which provided me with a structured way of thinking about the books I read, and gave me the idea of writing reviews. I was intrigued by the thought of using that structure to help me start to think differently about what I read, so I set myself the challenge of reading and reviewing 52 books in 2014.

Track of Words then came about because although I was happy with the journal, I was concerned that I might end up giving up part way through the year unless I had something to give me a little extra motivation. I wanted to make absolutely sure I saw the challenge through, and I figured that maybe setting up a blog and posting my reviews online would help me with that discipline. It was worth a try, so I headed over to WordPress and got cracking.

Of course I needed a name for this new venture, but I’ve never been a great one for coming up with cool names. At the time the plan was to review everything that I read – not just Black Library stories – so I was looking for something book-related but not too specific. I’d love to say that the name Track of Words came to me in a flash of insight, but in fact it was the title of a song (and album) I was listening to a lot at the time, by an English folk singer called Steve Knightley. I thought it fit the idea of book reviews, so that was decided!

My first book review was for a children’s book called Knightley and Son by Rohan Gavin, and you can read it here. It was a strange experience writing a review for the first time in so long, but I enjoyed it – and I think I instinctively fell into a tone of voice that I’ve tried to maintain ever since. I knew from the off that I wanted to write reviews in as objective a voice as possible, avoiding (for the most part) referring to myself, and being constructively critical but always looking for positives rather than being deliberately negative. That’s an approach I’ve stuck to for almost all of my reviews, even if I take a more personal voice in other blog posts.

The next review saw me head straight to 40k with Straken by Toby Frost – you can read that one here. It wasn’t long before I moved onto reviewing short stories as well, with Sarah Cawkwell’s Red Corsairs story The Tyrant’s Champion, and that – as they say – was that. I’ve developed the way in which I plan and structure my reviews over the years, and hopefully improved a little in my actual writing, but in those early posts you can see the beginnings of what I think – and hope – is an identifiable style. I’m sure it won’t be to everyone’s taste, but it’s a pretty accurate representation of how my brain works and I’m sticking with it!

Of course, that’s not where I stopped with Track of Words. The plan was always to write reviews, and for the first forty or so posts that exactly what I did, but it wasn’t long before I started writing blog posts too, mostly as a way of working through ideas I had and trying to figure out exactly what I thought about them during the process of writing. The first of those was a slightly rambling look at why books make such great presents – it’s a bit cheesy, but I stand by the core of that post! Looking back now I can read a lot of what I was going through into those early blog posts, as I was out of work and trying to figure out what to do with my life for a fair amount of time at that point.

Come the end of 2014 and I surpassed my target for the year, reading and reviewing (I think) 60 books, plus a good number of short stories what with the Black Library Advent Calendar that December! I set myself the same challenge for 2015 and 2016, hitting 57 and 55 book reviews respectively, before realising that it was getting hard to keep motivated to review EVERYTHING I read, and that I was deliberately choosing not to read some books because I didn’t want to have to review them afterwards. From 2017 onwards I’ve still set myself the goal of reading at least 52 books, but I’ve concentrated the reviews on just fantasy and science fiction books…and mostly Black Library.

Interviews
It’s not just reviews and blog posts that I’ve been writing, either. In July of 2017 I plucked up the courage to arrange my first ever author interview – with John French, talking about the Tallarn stories in the Horus Heresy. When I say plucked up the courage, remember that I’d started Track of Words as a way to challenge myself and develop some writing discipline, but I had ZERO experience in writing interviews. I’d met John a few times, and had some great conversations about his Ahriman series, but I was still pretty nervous to ask him for an interview – after all, I was just some random guy with a blog I wrote in my spare time!

Thankfully John agreed to the interview, and came back with some fantastic answers, and that spurred me on to gradually put together a few more interviews with different authors. Since then I’ve spoken to a whole range of different authors, variously face to face, via Skype or via email, and I hope I’ve been able to produce some interesting interviews. I know that there’s certainly been some contentiousness, some nostalgia, and I hope some humour across the course of those interviews, and fingers crossed there will be plenty more to come! Maybe not the contentiousness, mind.

I should also mention my Rapid Fire series of author interviews, in which I chat to Black Library authors about their upcoming books or audio dramas to give a little bit of information to anyone thinking about picking up each release. I like to think that these are interesting and useful from a fan’s perspective, and help the authors with a bit of free advertising for their new releases too. Thanks must go to Ian St. Martin for the genesis of these interviews, as the very first one – for Ian’s excellent 40k novel Lucius: The Faultless Blade – came about when we started talking about doing an interview to support the book’s release.

The problem was, I was right in the middle of transcribing a lengthy interview with Gav Thorpe – if you’ve ever done any audio transcribing you’ll sympathise when I say that I really couldn’t fit in another Skype interview. Instead, I came up with the idea of quick-fire interviews where I ask each author essentially the same questions, which I could send via email and wouldn’t take too long for either the authors to answer or me to turn into an article ready to post. Thus began Rapid Fire (for once, that’s a name I’m quite proud of actually), and 52 interviews later it’s a series that’s still going strong!

My favourites

These days I keep myself busy with a mixture of reviews, interviews and blog posts, and I hope that between those different types of articles there’s something of interest to most people. When I asked on Twitter for suggestions around what to cover in this article, someone (thanks Tim!) asked for a personal ‘of all time’ list, but I’ve never been great at picking favourites. Instead I’ll just pull out a few interviews and reviews that maybe I’m particularly proud of, or are for stories or subjects I especially loved.

Interviews and articles
It’s been an absolute pleasure to talk to so many Black Library authors and hear (or read) about their passions for the subject matter and the work they do. I’ve enjoyed every single one, but a few do stand out for one reason or another. I’m particularly fond of the first interview I did with Laurie Goulding, mostly about the Horus Heresy and his Scythes of the Emperor stories, as that was the first face to face interview (of any kind) I’d ever done. It was a bit nerve-wracking, but Laurie was an absolute pleasure to talk to, and I ended up wishing we could have spoken for longer!

I’m also really proud of my interview with Dan Abnett, who’s something of a Black Library hero to me – as I’m sure he is to many other people. I loved hearing from Dan about how he works and his writing routine, and the way his career has developed over the years…while obviously it was great fun to chat about Eisenhorn, Gaunt’s Ghosts and the Horus Heresy! Lastly, I was delighted to be able to interview Peter Fehervari, who is SO interesting and whose writing I absolutely love. I know the second part of that interview hasn’t yet arrived, but I promise it will just as soon as both Peter and I can sort it out!

Moving onto blog posts, I think the two articles I’m most proud of are my Getting Started With Black Library posts – one for 40k that I wrote back in 2016 and an Age of Sigmar version that I wrote just a few weeks back. One of the things I love the most about running Track of Words is when I’m able to help someone find a great story or work out what to read next, which is such a satisfying feeling. I’m conscious that I’ve been reading Warhammer fiction for 25 years so have watched it grow up, but anyone coming new to the hobby is faced with a daunting range of options – so those two articles are designed to help with that. My suggestions won’t necessarily match what other people think, but those articles are at least somewhere to start.

Book reviews
I’m going to reiterate what I said earlier – I’m really not good at picking out favourites! I’m not going to suggest that the reviews I’ve chosen below are my all-time favourite stories, but they’re a few highlights that have come to mind as I’ve been thinking about this. I’m also not going to talk about things I didn’t like as much – I’d prefer to be positive, rather than spend time pointing out stories that I wasn’t impressed by and dwelling on negativity.

First of all, back in 2015 I read a novella by Patrick Rothfuss called The Slow Regard of Silent Things, which is a very unusual book, and one that not everyone enjoys (a friend of mine simply didn’t see the point of it), but which in my opinion is just about the most beautiful thing I’ve ever read. I’m generally a very fast reader and find it hard to slow down, but the prose in this book was so beautiful I ended up reading the whole thing out loud to myself just so that I could take my time and savour it. I’m still pleased with how well my review encapsulated my feelings on this one – so if you fancy something a bit different, and assuming you’ve read at least one of the first two books in the series, I’d definitely recommend this.

Next up I’ve gone for When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi, which is a non-fiction book written by a neurosurgeon as he was dying of cancer. I know that sounds like a brutally heavy subject matter, and in a sense it’s exactly that, but at the same time it’s an incredibly well written book that somehow left me feeling uplifted despite the appalling circumstances under which it was written. I appreciate that it won’t be for everyone, but I really can’t recommend this enough, and once again I’m pretty happy with how I managed to get my thoughts about the book down in my review.

Those might seem rather left-field choices, so I’ll swing back to Black Library now for something a bit more on-brand. That being said, I’m going to pick something that might be contentious. I’ve reviewed some INCREDIBLE Black Library novels over the last few years, by brilliant authors like Dan Abnett, Aaron Dembski-Bowden, Chris Wraight, John French…the list goes on. The first BL review that came to mind, however, when I was thinking about books that really impressed me and which I enjoyed reviewing…was Dante by Guy Haley.

Why? Well despite not having any particular attachment to the Blood Angels, I just thought it was the most evocative and characterful depiction of a Space Marine Chapter AWAY FROM THE FIGHTING that I’ve read in…well, a long time, if not ever. I was hooked from the get go, I loved the measured pace it took for lots of the book, and I loved that Guy was able to offer a brand new origin story for such an interesting character. As with the others I’ve mentioned so far, I haven’t picked this just because the book was great, but because I was pleased with my review, even if the little extra section about the SE hardback is a bit unusual.

I want to highlight two more 40k novels (I know, I’ve focused exclusively on 40k – that’s just the way the ended up, it wasn’t deliberate) for a couple of specific reasons. Firstly, Ian Watson’s Space Marine is a book that divides fans, but one that I remember reading MANY years ago and enjoying. I re-read it back in 2017 and had a think about how it fitted in with the current style of 40k writing, and had a blast revisiting the utter madness of 90s-era 40k. I think it’s a book that should be more widely available just to illustrate how far the setting has come on!

I also want to quickly point out my review of Choose Your Enemies, the latest Ciaphas Cain novel from Sandy Mitchell. I had loads of fun working footnotes into that review (it’ll make sense if you’ve read any of the Cain stories), which made me chuckle! That was a fun review to write, and I just fancied pointing it out.

Audio dramas and short stories
Over the years I’ve reviewed an increasing number of audio dramas, mostly from Black Library but a couple from elsewhere as well. I’ll admit I was a late convert to audios, but I’m totally hooked now, and despite all I’ve said about not picking favourites I do actually have a favourite audio drama. Chris Dows’ Titans’ Bane is one of the few BL stories to leave me in tears, and in my opinion is still the gold standard for BL audios. If you haven’t listened to it yet, I can’t recommend it enough! And just look at that cover!

As you can see from the stats at the top of the page, I’ve actually reviewed more short stories than anything else! What I think I love the most about short stories is their flexibility, and what an author can achieve with them. At one extreme they can tell a single great story in its entirety, giving you everything you need in just a few thousand words. At the other extreme they can take something much bigger, a series, or an idea, and drill down into one component of that to examine something that maybe wouldn’t work in context of a novel. I’m going to pick out a couple of examples of beautiful standalone short stories, and also a couple of series which I’ve particularly enjoyed.

A friend of mine, Howard, is a big fan of the tyranids, and we often end up discussing one particular Dan Abnett short story – The Fall of Malvolion. We both agree that if you want to understand the sheer, absolute horror of the Hive Fleets then this is the story to check out. I certainly can’t think of another story which demonstrates so clearly and simply just how unstoppable the tyranids are; there’s a moment in this where a guardsman experiences a moment of euphoria quickly dashed and turned to absolute terror, and it’s just genius.

I’m also going to mention Heartwood by Robbie MacNiven, which I think is my favourite Age of Sigmar short story to date. It was the first story I read about the Sylvaneth, and I remember being amazed at how Robbie managed to tell such a characterful and engaging story while also painting a genuinely beautiful picture of this part of the Mortal Realms at the same time. This is a great example of a standalone short story, which doesn’t need to be read alongside anything else in order to be a really powerful story.

As for short story series, I’m actually in the process of re-reading my way through all of the Eisenhorn and Ravenor stories from Dan Abnett (again), and in my opinion the short stories are absolutely essential if you want to see the full picture. Sure, you can read the novels on their own and enjoy them, but if you think about stories like Master Imus’ Transgression, The Strange Demise of Titus Endor, Playing Patience, and so many others, you get an enormous amount of character exploration that really adds to the overall experience. Have a look at this article to see how they fit into the reading order, and find links to my reviews of everything I’ve re-read so far!

John French is another author who writes excellent short stories, and who deliberately builds them into what he’s working on in novel form. That’s visible at the moment in his Horusian Wars series, but for me it’s the Ahriman series where it worked best. You can pick all of the Ahriman short stories up in the Ahriman: Exodus anthology, which nicely consolidates the whole lot into two sub-series, one dealing with the Thousand Sons as a whole, from a single legionary through to Ahriman and then Magnus, while the other focuses on the character of Ctesias. Reading these stories gives SO MUCH additional context, and they’re also just brilliantly written stories.

Those are just a few highlights from the 700+ reviews I’ve written over the last few years – obviously there are MANY more great stories in amongst those reviews that I’ve either forgotten about or don’t have the time or space to write more about! I’m proud to have covered so many stories from so many different authors, to have kept pretty much up to date with all of the Age of Sigmar fiction, to have gone back and talked about some classic Inferno! stories in my Forgotten Texts reviews, and to have read and reviewed every story in Black Library’s Advent Calendar series for the past few years. I hope some of those reviews have inspired you to pick up some of these stories!

What have I got out of all this work?

Writing this article has reminded me of all the work I’ve put in since 2014, and I’ve certainly kept myself busy writing a thousand posts and nearly three quarters of a million words. That’s all on top of a day job, for most of the time that I’ve been writing these articles! And no, I don’t get paid for running Track of Words, sadly – although do let me know if you’d like to help with that…!

Don’t get me wrong, though, despite all the hard work I’ve got a lot out of Track of Words as well. If nothing else, I’ve read an awful lots of amazing stories over the last few years, many of which I suspect I might not otherwise have read if I wasn’t focusing on getting reviews written. Working on reviews has also helped me to look at stories, and reading, in a different light, to think more carefully about why I do and don’t like certain things, and to try and understand what went into the act of writing each story.

I’ve learned new skills and built my confidence, and developed a discipline that I’ve never really had before. I hadn’t written reviews for years before starting this, I’d never interviewed anyone or talked on a podcast, or set up a website (I started this as a free WordPress site before buying a domain etc. in 2017), and I had always had a tendency to get excited about a project for a while but lose interest part way through and let it slide without finishing. Track of Words has helped on all of those fronts, and I’d recommend doing something like this to anyone who’s keen to push themselves and learn!

I’m probably going to sound supremely cheesy here, but all of that stuff is overshadowed by how much Track of Words has allowed me to meet people, and make friends and connections. Whether it’s chatting on Twitter, in the comments, or in person, I’ve been able to meet and engage with so many interesting people that I wouldn’t otherwise have found. Some of those are authors, or editors, while plenty of them are fans just like me. As my mate Stu said recently, the Warhammer hobby – which is a huge driver of Track of Words – is a great way to bring people together and grow friendships. Here’s to many more!

Next steps

I can’t finish this (very long – sorry) post without talking a little bit about what’s next for Track of Words. I’ve got plenty of reviews and interviews planned for the rest of 2018, especially with all of the exciting new releases I’m hopefully going to be picking up at the Black Library Weekender in a few weeks’ time, and I’m going to do my best to continue with the recent trend of posting pretty much every day. I’m hopefully going to be digging into the back catalogue of Warhammer Chronicles omnibuses in a few more Rapid Fire interviews, so they should be fun.

If I can find the time on top of all that I’ve got plans for another longer interview or two, although I’m not going to mention who those are with – you’ll have to wait and see! As mentioned earlier, I promise I will get the second part of my interview with Peter Fehervari sorted out as soon as I possibly can, but that’s looking like being in early 2019 now. Trust me, I’m just as interested in that interview as anyone else!

Speaking of 2019, I haven’t finalised any plans yet but I’m probably going to have to slow things down a little and give myself a bit of a breather, just to make sure I can keep a decent balance of work, life and Track of Words! Don’t worry though, I’m definitely going to keep up the book reviews and author interviews as the main components of Track of Words – I might just pull back on things like my Black Library Weekly posts, and maybe do a few fewer back catalogue reviews.

What I’m hoping that’s going to mean is that I’ll have time to do more in the way of full-length author interviews, and I’ve got some SUPER exciting plans for those for next year. Seriously, you should see my Trello board for Track of Words…I can’t wait to get working on some of those things!

I’m also very much open to suggestions if there’s anything you would really like to see me cover, so please do get in touch via the usual channels – the comments below, Facebook, Twitter or email – and let me know what you would like to see.

To finish off I’d like to say a huge thanks to all the authors whose work I’ve read and enjoyed, for giving me MANY hours of entertainment over the last few years. Also thanks to every single person who’s read one of my posts or engaged with me on social media over the last four and three quarter years, as your encouragement and enthusiasm has been a massive motivating factor for me!

Thanks once again, and here’s to another 1,000 posts!

Michael.